<p>Does anyone know what the GPA average and distribution is at UChicago? I expect this may vary by major, by years of enrollment (e.g., core-heavy first year vs. upperclass) and may be drifting upwards in these times of grade inflation, but any info would be appreciated, and the more granularity the better. Ideally, the info would be a set of bell curve-like analyses for each year of enrollment (1st-4th) matrixed by graduation year (2013 on back) and by, say, top 10-15 or so majors. This would enable me and others interested to get a sense of a student's relative performance (to the degree that grades measure it)</p>
<p>Fat chance.</p>
<p>Dean’s List / General Honors requires a 3.25 GPA. Manual counts of people receiving general honors in successive graduation programs indicates that more than half the class (55-60%) receives general honors at graduation. The median GPA at graduation is probably around 3.3.</p>
<p>My kids’ experience was that they received progressively higher grades as they took higher level courses and more courses within their majors. My fourth-year is going to graduate with about a 3.5 GPA; he struggled to hold onto 3.0 his first few quarters. </p>
<p>I think a 3.7 at graduation puts you in the top 10%, or close to it. I don’t have a lot of information about the bottom half of the class, but I would bet that very few students wind up with GPAs below 2.8 or so.</p>
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<p>…Sure, lemme look that up for ya. I have this exact spreadsheet lying around somewhere.</p>
<p>Seriously, nobody’s gonna have that information, save perhaps for some tortured soul at the UChi registrar. You’d be lucky to get an educated guesstimation of the average GPA for the whole school.</p>
<p>It is difficult to know. The College doesn’t like to give out that sort of information, and people tend not to talk about their grades very much. Someone might say “I did well on a test” or “I was happy with my result”, but one is hard-pressed to get numbers out of people. It is generally frowned upon.</p>
<p>Thanks to all for your responses. That UC students don’t talk about or compare grades is a good thing, and I certainly hadn’t expected there to be any officially published info. However, I had a sense that somewhere within the bowels of administration this kind of analysis likely was done, and considered the possibility that it might have been “wikileaked.” Absent that (and that appears to be absent), some number of anecdotal responses to the question would allow for rough triangulation and, in their own right, be interesting if not authoritative. JHS’s thoughtful response (as JHS’s responses usually do) came about as close to hitting the mark as I am likely to get, although I’d certainly be interested in seeing additional replies, along the lines of JHS’s or otherwise. Again, thanks all.</p>
<p>This is from Stuart Rojstaczer’s Grade Inflation site, and represents the best info he was able to get on UChicago average GPA over time, at least as of a few years ago:</p>
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<p>Rojstaczer has much more extensive data for most of the other colleges he tracks.</p>
<p>You can find the average GPA for a variety of schools here:</p>
<p>[National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/]National”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/)</p>
<p>Of note, in 2006, while Chicago had a 3.35 avg (according to the site), and this number represents a significant increase from a decade before, Chicago’s average gpa remains considerably more grounded than Harvard (3.45), Brown (3.59), Stanford (3.55), Pennsylvania (3.44), and Amherst (3.48).</p>
<p>These stats seem to indicate that Chicago’s reputation for grade deflation is overblown but, at the same time, it is important to note that Chicago’s average gpa is at the tail end of the group in the top colleges pool. </p>
<p>Interestingly, Swarthmore, a school supposedly known for grade inflation, had an avg gpa of 3.48 in 2006. </p>
<p>If these stats are true, saying Chicago has (some) grade deflation is probably true, whereas Swarthmore is near the top of the pack for grade inflation!</p>